Trump wins $25 million from Meta for suspending his accounts

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and President Donald Trump have settled a lawsuit filed by the president in 2021 after the company suspended his social media accounts after the January 6th riots on Capitol Hill. 

Meta has agreed to pay roughly $25 million to settle the lawsuit, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that Trump signed the settlement agreement on Wednesday. 

Of the $25 million settlement, $22 million will go to a fund for Trump's presidential library and the rest will be used to pay legal fees and plaintiffs on the case. 

Mark Zuckerberg and Trump reportedly spoke about the lawsuit in November as the tech mogul sought to rekindle his relationship with Trump during a trip to Mar-a-Lago for dinner. 

He later returned to Mar-a-Lago in January to settle the lawsuit with Trump's lawyers. 

The settlement is one more example of how Zuckerberg is rapidly trying to repair his relationship with Trump after he won the 2024 presidential election. 

In 2021, Zuckerberg defended the decision to ban Trump from Facebook and Instagram after the January 6th riots, after the president continued protesting the validity of the 2020 election. 

'We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,' Zuckerberg said in a post announcing the ban of Trump at the time. 

 The tech billionaire first flattered Trump after he was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024 on the campaign trail. 

'On a personal note, seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most bada** things I've ever seen in my life,' he said at the time. 

On January 7, Zuckerberg announced he would end its fact-checking program in favor of a community-based verification system. 

Zuckerberg also conceded in an subsequent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan that he made a mistake by censoring and banning speech on the Meta company platforms.  

'I feel like in retrospect I deferred too much to the kind of critique of the media on what we should do,' he said. 'And since then, I think generally trust in media has fallen off a cliff, right?' 

Trump has defended his meetings and relationships with tech billionaires, making the case that it's part of his effort to make the country better economically.  

'I want to get ideas from them,' he told CNBC anchor Jim Cramer during an interview in December. 'Look, we want them to do well. We want everybody, and we want great jobs, fantastic salaries.' 

The settlement is the latest of many Trump contentious lawsuits against media and social media organizations that have been settled rather than sent to court. 

ABC News also agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit by paying $15 million toward Trump's presidential library after anchor George Stephanopoulos said that Trump had been found civilly liable for rape.